Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian War | Molly Crabapple, Marwan Hisham
A bracingly immediate memoir by a young man coming of age during the Syrian war, Brothers of the Gun is an intimate lens on the centurys bloodiest conflict and a profound meditation on kinship, home, and freedom. This powerful memoir, illuminated with Molly Crabapples extraordinary art, provides a rare lens through which we can see a region in deadly conflict.Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy In 2011, Marwan Hisham and his two friendsfellow working-class college students Nael and Tareqjoined the first protests of the Arab Spring in Syria, in response to a recent massacre. Arm-in-arm they marched, poured Coca-Cola into one anothers eyes to blunt the effects of tear gas, ran from the security forces, and cursed the countrys president, Bashar al-Assad. It was ecstasy. A long-bottled revolution was finally erupting, and freedom from a brutal dictator seemed, at last, imminent. Five years later, the three young friends were scattered: one now an Islamist revolutionary, another dead at the hands of government soldiers, and the last, Marwan, now a journalist in Turkish exile, trying to find a way back to a homeland reduced to rubble. Marwan was there to witness and document firsthand the Syrian war, from its inception to the present. He watched from the rooftops as regime warplanes bombed soldiers; as revolutionary activist groups, for a few dreamy days, spray-painted hope on Raqqa; as his friends died or threw in their lot with Islamist fighters. He became a journalist by courageously tweeting out news from a city under siege by ISIS, the Russians, and the Americans all at once. He saw the country that ran through his veinsthe country that held his hopes, dreams, and fearsbe destroyed in front of him, and eventually joined the relentless stream of refugees risking their lives to escape. Illustrated with more than eighty ink drawings by Molly Crabapple that bring to life the beauty and chaos, Brothers of the Gun offers a ground-level reflection on the Syrian revolutionand how it bled into international catastrophe and global war. This is a story of pragmatism and idealism, impossible violence and repression, and, even in the midst of war, profound acts of courage, creativity, and hope. From the anarchy, torment, and despair of the Syrian war, Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple have drawn a book of startling emotional power and intellectual depth.Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger and From the Ruins of Empire A revelatory and necessary read on one of the most destructive wars of our time.Angela Davis
Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian War | 
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